Tuesday, March 14, 2017

New Book Out Over Immigration in Germany

New book out this week....entitled: "The Wretched", by Robin Alexander. What she did was go and dig into the German refugee crisis and how Chancellor Merkel pursued this business.

So far, it's only in German, and I am pursuing channels to find a copy in English (it's just been published this week).

One of the reviewers wrote up a piece on a single item which Alexander came to discover.

In the long hot summer of 2015, with tens of thousand arriving every week in Germany....things were going negative for the government. The news media....mostly the public-TV crowd (ARD, ZDF)...were making the whole open door policy seem marvelous to the public. But as we got to September....there was this warning about what was to transpire....40,000 people would arrive over some weekend as they progressed from Austria into Bavaria.

Merkel held a meeting and there was a decision that was to be implemented, where they would shut down the border and not allow the 40,000 to enter. This caused some review, and the cops basically said that while they would implement it.....the negativity of them holding back these refugees would be broadcast by public TV and put everyone (cops, border guards, the Chancellor, etc) into a negative image.

So Merkel did the only thing she could as Chancellor.....she kept the door open.

What Alexander doesn't spell out at that point is that the Merkel coalition went into a deep thought process. Winter would come and slow this migrant trail down to some degree. Various nations were putting up fences. But what they really needed was Turkey....Erdogan and his faithful folks.....to stop the migration trail and the smuggler crews.

So in the midst of winter, a deal was being worked out. Because Merkel and the whole coalition (the CDU and SPD) could not go and do something harsh, and trigger criticism by German public TV journalists....they instead worked up an unbelievable deal where the EU would consider Turkey for membership in the EU, allow free-visa status for Turks, and pay three-billion Euro a year to Erdogan to hold back the migrants.

All of this would have worked out great, with still a thrilled German public over immigration....if it hadn't been this odd New Year's Eve episode in Koln. In the course of a month, roughly half the German public woke up and realized that there was a lot of questions over migration, thugs, crime, and male immigrants with bad behavior. By February of 2016....the public networks (ARD/ZDF) were in a bind. They couldn't tell the story in the same manner as they did in in 2014 or 2015.

If you compared nightly news episodes from this week against summer of 2015....you'd mostly be shocked at the manipulated stories and slant/bias of the news media of Germany.

As you look across the public landscape today of Germany....there is tremendous criticism by most working-class Germans over Erdogan, the current government in Turkey, and the criticism of Germans (using the word Nazi more than a thousand times per week in Turkish newspapers and government official commentary).

As angry as the German public is, and as well the German elite intellectual journalists....they fail to understand how they got to this position.

The ownership of the immigration, asylum and migration program? It's not Chancellor Merkel, nor the CDU/SPD coalition, nor the Bundestag in Berlin, or even the sixteen German states. The ownership is purely in the hands of the German news media....public networks ARD/ZDF. Rather than report....they have become in the amusing sense....agent provocateurs.

As we march through this campaign season.....both the major parties (CDU and SPD, along with the Green Party, and Linke Party)...you can observe the parties and the news media try to avoid any commentary or criticism of immigration issues. Sadly, every bit of criticism that they'd really like to say over Erdogan or Turkey....is kept mostly in check because they really can't afford to upset Erdogan. One can laugh over the pit that has been dug and how everyone marvels at the lousy mess but there 's nothing that can be done to solve this mess now.

The book by Alexander might stir up some criticism of Merkel and push the CDU to admit that they ought to go and find a new candidate for Chancellor....but it's a simple fact that they have wasted several years with a migration policy that is screwed up and they need a solution which the news media won't accept. It's a chapter of German history, which can't be told in a positive way.

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This essay log is written by an American who offers wit and sarcasm on Germany, Germans, Germanology, German political figures, German TV, German beer, German food, German humor (or lack of), German habits, German weirdness, German news, German autos, German brilliance, German stupidity, German customs, German Nazis, German history, and German stubbornness.

I was one of those Americans who did over twenty years of military time....married a German....and eventually returned as a retiree.

I'm one of the few who stood under the German umbrella.....paid German taxes for some years.....German social security.....and felt the various pains like Germans.

So, this is my all-purpose commentary essay, designed for Americans mostly (and those Germans who accidentally discover it). I tend to put German culture into the spotlight of sarcasm, wit and humor. I'm simply pointing out the richness and craziness of life in Germany, which even some Germans can't understand.

The amusing thing is that I'm merely repeating the exercise that Mark Twain performed in 1880, when he published "A Tramp Abroad". Various comments were dished out on the Germans....which apparently did not trigger any wars, chaos, climate change, or ill feelings.